


Ulterior Decorating

by oncethrown



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season 12, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Brother Feels, Castiel in the Bunker, Charlie Bradbury & Dean Winchester Friendship, Charlie Bradbury Lives, Complicated Mary Winchester Feelings, Dean and Cas Hunt Together, Eileen Leahy Lives, F/M, Family Feels, Interior Decorating, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-03-31 14:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13977516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncethrown/pseuds/oncethrown
Summary: The Winchesters and their friends have battled every type of thing that goes bump in the night. They’ve killed Gods. Fought Knights and Princes of Hell. Developed a cozier relationship than anyone would ever want with the King of Hell (and the Queen Mother) and cast Satan himself from the Earth three damn times.As they all face a world that doesn’t seem to be screeching toward an apocalypse anymore, Team Free Will and their associates find themselves facing a whole new set of challenges: remembering how to hunt for fun, the impossibility of not getting songs from “My Fair Lady” stuck in your head, and the inscrutability of the IKEA catalogue.Or: The one where decorating the bunker makes everyone fall in loveSpoilers through roughly the end of 12x10 and canon divergent from there, not wholly canon compliant prior to that.





	1. TV-Roadside

_TV—Roadside Clean Up_

 

They’re about forty minutes away from the bunker on their way back from what had turned out to be  a pretty run-of-the-mill salt and burn when Dean starts to pull to the right side of the road. Sam’s been dozing, watching the landscape rush past. It’s been a long time since he’s been able to just rest in the passenger side after a hunt, instead of dig through lore or desperately try to solve a puzzle against a ticking clock.

 

It takes Sam a second to see why Dean is pulling over.  A big white sign with the word “Free” painted on it in big block letters, perched at the top of rickety tower of furniture. 

 

“What are you doing?” Sam asks as Dean stops the car. 

 

“Thought I saw a TV,” Dean replies. “Big flat screen.”

 

“You want a TV?”

 

“Yeah.” Dean threw the Impala in park. “Ever since we put Lucifer back in the box things have been quiet,” Dean told him, climbing out of the car and making Sam follow. “This is the first time in, what? A decade? That we’ve been short one apocalypse? Just  hunting instead of jumping from one shit storm, straight into the next shit storm, caused by whatever Hail Mary we came up with to deal with the prior shit storm?”

 

“So… you’re bored?” Sam laughs. “The world’s failure to end has bored you, and you want to be able to watch a little Maury between vampires?”

 

Dean scoffs. “I’m going to ignore the fact that you accused me of watching Daytime TV.  No. We’ve got our own place now. We even get to sleep in it now and again. I would not say no to the occasional night here and there when we aren’t out killing monsters, where I could sit and drink a couple beers and maybe watch some Swayze. Eastwood. Stallone.”

 

They pause in front of the pile of stuff under the free sign. There is a TV, which looks like it’s in pretty good shape.

 

“It’s not a terrible idea,” Sam concedes. It would be nice to watch Game of Thrones on something bigger than his laptop. And to watch anything without having to crane his neck down at his computer screen on the table all the time. 

 

“Plus… imagine Cas, actually catching a Road House reference for once,” Dean chuckles. 

 

That’s the last thing it takes to convince Sam. The way Dean laughs and smiles at the idea of something as normal as watching a movie he loves. 

 

“Alright. I’ll take left you take right,” Sam replies, grabbing his self assigned side of the TV and lifting. “When is Cas supposed to be back?”

 

The smile slides off of Dean’s face before he answers. “Got a text from him today. He should be back tonight.”

 

Cas, as a payment for the favor he and Mary had called in from the British Men of Letters to get Sam and Dean away from the Blacksite they’d ended up at after what the Secret Service though was an attempted assassination of the President of the United States and an inexplicable, but successful assassination of his aide-slash-mistress, had gone in to look at the Men of Letters operation, hear the sales pitch, and see if it was something he might, in turn, be able to sell to the angels. 

 

Sam considers asking if Cas said anything about whether or not their mother would be coming back to the bunker with him, but decides not to. If Cas has said anything about their mother, Dean would have mentioned it. 

 

Sam nods, shifts the weight of the flatscreen into one hand, and opens the door to the back seat of the Impala, then helps Dean guide the TV inside. “You think he’ll stay at the bunker for a while?”

 

It’s an idle question. Sam is surprised when Dean’s response is a grunt and a shrug instead of any actual words, but he lets it go, then  goes back to the roadside pile of furniture, which also has a DVD player and a stack of DVD’s. He grabs them without looking at the titles, and climbs back into the passenger seat. 

 

They don’t talk much for the rest of the drive. Sam reads off the titles of the DVD’s which are mostly newer action flicks, a couple of romantic comedies, and a few kids movies.  

 

Sam dozes off again for a while until finally Dean says, “I don’t trust the Brits going after the Angels. The idea of those douche bags with fire power like that is the kind of thing that would ruin a movie night for me.”

 

“The Brits already have plenty of fire power, and I’m sure they know how fractured the Angels are right now. I don’t see a tactical advantage to trying to buddy up with heaven.”

 

“Hmmm.” Is Dean’s only response. 

 

* * *

There’s a 1968 Rambler AMX parked outside the bunker when they get home. Green, with twin white stripes. 

 

Sam whistles when he sees it, but sets his hand over his gun, ready to draw. Dean does the same. 

 

The driver’s side door opens. Dean draws down before he registers just who he’s aiming at. 

 

“Eileen!” Sam shouts in greeting. 

 

Dean quickly holsters his gun, echoing Sam’s cry as he does. 

 

“Hi guys!” 

 

Sam crosses the distance between them, pulling her into a hug before stepping back so she can see his face.  “What are you doing here? How did you even find us?”

 

 “I was in Sioux Falls, on a hunt with Jody a couple weeks ago. She said if I was ever in Kansas that I should stop by. See your secret lair. She gave me the coordinates.”

 

“This is a goddamn beautiful car,” Dean tells her, before he starts to appreciatively circle the vehicle. “V8 Engine?”

 

“Better believe it,” Eileen says, “But not a lot of trunk space. I was hoping I could stay with you for a couple days while I work on my gear storage? It’s hard to do in the parking lot of a cheap motel.”

 

“Yeah, you want any help doing that?” Sam asks. 

 

Eileen shrugs. “Sure. But mostly I swung by to see if I could use your shower. I dug up three graves this weekend and slept in the car. I’m disgusting.”

 

“One hot shower, coming up.” Sam laughs. 

 

They let Eileen inside the bunker and Sam shows her to one of the bigger bedrooms, which has it owns shower, before going back upstairs to help Dean carry down the TV. 

 

“So. She came all the way to Kansas to fiddle with her car and use our shower, huh?” Dean asks. 

 

“What, you want to do the full holy water and silver thing on her?”

 

“Oh, no,” Dean says, a wide grin spreading across his face as he hauls up his side of the TV. “I believe it’s her.”

 

“So, what is your problem?”

 

“I don’t have a problem. The walls in those bedrooms are definitely thick enough to stop me from having a problem.”

 

“What are you talking about, Dean?”

 

“Sammy, seriously? The way you lit up when she was waiting outside? Her getting the bunker coordinates from Jody? You like her. She likes you. You _like_ eachother.”

 

“Oh, grow up.”

 

“Uh huh. Sammy and Eileen, sitting in a —“

 

“I will drop this fucking TV on you.”

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Record Player Men of Letters Storage

Record Player — Mens of Letters Storage

 

 

 

When Eileen gets out of the shower she’s hungry and Sam and Dean haven’t been able to agree on a place to put the TV, which is sitting in the middle of the long table in the main room.

 

Eileen offers to go pick up dinner and beer for everyone. Dean makes a point to wink obnoxiously at Sam when Sam says he’ll go with her. 

 

He waits for them both to be gone before he heads down into the barrack hallway, checking his phone as he walks. Cas hasn’t texted, but it’s still pretty early. He probably wouldn’t text from the road. 

 

The worry that Cas might not come back has been pestering Dean like a popcorn kernel in his teeth ever since Cas had left, his own beat-up sedan following behind one of those huge anonymous black vans. 

 

Dean stops at the door just before his own, pulls out his key ring, and thumbs along the edges of the keys until he finds the right one. He’s not sure why he’s been keeping this door locked. It’s not like there’s anything shocking or secret in here. He walks inside and closes the door behind him. 

 

The bedrooms in the bunker are all roughly the same. Little concrete squares with a bed, a desk, a small wardrobe, a dresser, and an old fashioned ceramic basin and water pitcher on the dresser. Dean had gone through all of them when he was trying to pick out his own room. A few little remnants of personality had been left behind, a chilling reminder of how suddenly the American chapter of Men of Letters had been snuffed out. 

 

Most had been neat as a pin. An inch of dust laying over neatly stacked books, and notepads full of perfect cursive, pens laying at a perfect 90 degree angle to the books. Crisp button downs hanging in the wardrobe, socks and undies neatly folded and arranged by color in the dressers. There were a few larger rooms that contained two of everything. About every other room had a record player. 

 

That had made the humanity of the less conforming rooms all the more striking. The room with a hot plate and tea kettle on the dresser. The room with a prominently displayed wedding picture. The room where Dean had found, underneath a layer of neatly folded boxers and carefully balled up socks, a full set of silky pink lingerie, and a ‘men’s health’ magazine with very few articles scattered between photo spreads of muscular and underdressed young men. 

 

He and Sam had thrown away a lot of the old clothes. No one wanted to wear a dead man’s boxers. They’d kept a selection of the suits that had fit them and and scavenged things for their own rooms they needed. 

 

Sam had taken the hotplate and the tea kettle. Dean had taken one of the record players. 

 

They had cleaned out one room in the left wing of the barracks; dusting, sweeping, throwing new sheets on the bed. That room had even less personality than the ones they had left dusty. It was the room where people stayed when they were just passing through. 

 

The rest hadn’t been touched past what had been scavenged out of them. They were still dusty and abandoned. Except for the room next to Dean’s… which has been a bit of a project. 

 

This one Dean had scrubbed down. He’d wiped the dust off of and out of everything. Washed the furniture afterward. Swept the floor. Mopped. He’d thrown away everything that had been left behind in it. Set the mattress outside one afternoon to air out. He’d even bought new bedding for it. Those soft tee shirt material sheets that were always on sale at Target and a couple of those soft micro plush blankets in the same color. 

 

Light blue. 

 

This one was Cas’s room. For when he came to stay.

 

Technically, Dean is keeping this room a secret. He hasn’t told anyone about it, but it’s also not as though anyone has asked about it. Even when his mother had stayed here for a few days, she had asked if they had a room to spare, not an already cleaned out and prepared room to offer. 

 

So he hadn’t offered. 

 

But now it’s ready. And Cas is coming back. 

 

And there’s something missing. 

 

It’s clean, and as far as concrete rooms twenty feet underground in a secret bunker for a defunct secret society go, it’s cozy. But it’s not quite right. It’s not ready. 

 

The thing is that Cas doesn’t own anything. He hasn’t left anything behind for Dean to set aside for him in here. He doesn’t even have any clothes for Dean to tuck away in the drawers. 

 

The only things in this room that aren’t in all the other rooms are the blankets. And Cas doesn’t even sleep.

 

Dean sighs. There has to be something. Something beside a cheap polyester blanket and a lack of dust to prove that he thought about this. That, despite all the fights and fuck ups over the last couple years, that he really does want to offer Castiel a home here with them. A place he can park that ugly tan monstrosity he calls a car and take a load off those ugly loafers he’s always wearing. 

 

Dean turns around slowly, taking in the room, then walks back out, locking the door behind him. None of the other barrack rooms are locked, and he walks into the next one over, sneezing when opening the door disturbs the dust. 

 

This one is mostly empty. Nothing particularly notable on the desk or on the dresser. 

 

But the nightstand. There’s a record player on top, and next to it, an old fashioned wooden milk crate full of records. Old stuff. Stuff Dean doesn’t recognize. But Cas is eternal, isn’t he? It would be something for him to try while other people are asleep. 

 

Dean takes the milk crate and the record player and carries them back into Cas’s room. He goes to the kitchen, gets a rag and wets it under the sink. It takes him the better part of an hour to get all the dust wiped off and make sure the record player works. 

 

He the record player on Cas’s nightstand, the milk crate next to it. 

 

It’s not quite right and Dean knows that. 

 

But maybe once Cas is actually here, and once he wants something, asks for something. Then it’ll be right.


End file.
